Sunny San Jose

Friday 1st November

It felt good to wake up feeling nice and warm in our comfortable bed this morning, even better not having to run the gauntlet of possible bear attack to get to the bathroom!  Sitting in comfort with hot coffee and speedy internet access also made us appreciate the benefits of having such a great base to come back to.  We are indeed very lucky to have such good and generous friends as Sherry and Rich.

We were a bit slow off the starting blocks but once we were well caffeinated we headed out to Almaden Quicksilver Country Park, about a 15 mile drive away.  The park is on the southern edge of Silicon Valley and includes a nice contrast of forests, meadows and deep valleys with dozens of trails crisscrossing and providing excellent running routes.  There are several entrances to the park and as we were at the Hacienda entrance we decided to follow the Hacienda Trail as it wound around the north east edge of the park.  This meant a cold start straight into some significant climbing and it was hot! (Not complaining, honestly, love it!). It seems to be about as difficult to find somewhere flat to run in California as it is in west Dorset (unless you want to do out and back on paved valley trails) so we resigned ourselves to another plod rather than the tempo run that we really needed to be doing.

We did an 11.3 mile figure of eight loop following great trails with some very steep ascents and descents. Most of the trails were wide jeep tracks but once we turned off onto the New Almaden Trail we could have been running across Exmoor (apart from the sunshine) on narrow undulating paths through the trees.  We were completely out of synch today; I felt great to begin with and Martin was really struggling.  After a few miles he started to feel better and after a few miles more I ran out of steam. It was way too hilly to maintain any sort of pace so we just trotted along enjoying the great views and the lovely sunshine. Fortunately the uphill start meant that we could blast a fast downhill finish on the Mine Hill Trail back down to our starting point.

We barely scratched the surface of this lovely park and we are very much looking forward to returning when our legs are a little less burned out from 3 days strenuous hiking in Yosemite so that we can do it justice.

Next stop was the lovely Whole Foods store where we picked up a delicious salad and took it to Almaden Lake Park ($6 for parking or free on the road and walk an extra 50 metres?) for lunch al fresco and an hour of relaxing, reading and juggling. I resisted the begging of the resident bird population, my salad was far too tasty to share!

Our obsession with food took us back to the shops to get some groceries at my favourite food store Trader Joe's so that we didn't eat all of Sherry and Rich's food and then after belatedly sorting out our camping gear and airing out the tent, Rich drove us to meet Sherry from work at a great pasta restaurant the Spaghetti Factory.